For any men in the audience: At what point does a request become a nag? How many repeated requests, with how much time in between each request, are allowed before the aforementioned simple request becomes what www.dictionary.com calls “an old, inferior, or worthless horse”?

This column ran in June, 2007. The story is true; the names didn’t have to be changed because it’s just perfectly obvious what’s going on.

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In the beginning, there was the Newly-Built house, and the House was indeed in sore need of fixtures, and so the husband and wife didst visit the Design Center, and they didst descend upon the perky Design Center Coordinator and select their cabinets, and their window treatments, and their floor coverings.

And they didst select carpet, and the pad was upgradeth to flat rubber, and it was good.

And they didst invite their friends, who dranketh of the wine and beer, and the wine didst spill on the new carpet, and as it is written it was always the merlot and never the chablis that didst tumble.

And the babies didst arrive, and the babies were placed on the carpet to play, and they didst commence to frolic and emit noxious odors and substances and smear the concoctions directly into the pile and the parents didst look upon this with dismay and cry, “It’s your turn to clean that crap up!”

And a puppy didst come to abide with the family and didst take forever to housebreak, and so the parents were causeth to buy products like Urine B Gone and didst crawl over the surface of the carpet with handheld fluorescent lights and they didst marvel at the mess and placeth the puppy once more into its run, all the while wondering whose brilliant idea it had been to select white berber.

And so it came to pass that one day the wife didst weary of plying the carpet with chemicals in a vain effort to keep it presentatable, causing her to say to the husband, “If we don’t get tile in here soon I’m going to leave and then YOU’LL have to keep this stinking mess clean.”

And while the husband didst indeed long for three-day weekends of football and basketball playoffs and kegs of beer and cigars and all-night poker, he didst recall which side his bread was indeed buttereth, and so he didst suck it right up and call professionals who descended upon their abode and didst rip out the offending mess and replaceth it with sparkling ceramic tile.

And the puppies and babies did cavort and frolic and the wife didst look upon it and smile, and it was good, until strawberry jelly wert smeared into the grout and there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But satisfaction didst finally settle upon the land until one day the wife didst realize that not a single wall of the entire downstairs had a single baseboard, destroyed in the Tileapalooza that had grippeth their house for almost a month.

And the husband didst protest that ’twas no big deal; that if he couldst only purchase a $150 miter saw complete with laser optics he wouldst be able to finish those up, lickety-splitteth.

“Lickety-splitteth” apparently meaning “six months” in biblical terms.

And the miter saw didst draw dust and when the wife didst ask gentle questions about when, mayhap, her living room might not look like a construction site, she was accused of being entirely too picky about the caulking gun that wert permanently installed on the coffee table.

And the wife didst not smile, and when gentle reminders wert called ‘nagging’ she didst the only thing that she really could do:

Writeth a column.

 

©     E.S. Evans 2007